We just learned there is a catch to PlayStation 5 owners who want to play Sea of Thieves on their preferred console.
As you may have heard, Microsoft recently decided to bring four of the games that they made, before the Activision Blizzard deal, to their competitor’s platforms, in the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. Sea of Thieves is skipping Nintendo, at least for this generation, so Sony users looking for console exclusives are getting a pretty interesting one soon.
But, as reported by Exputer, it turns out that Sea of Thieves players will need to log on to a Microsoft account to be able to play their game on PlayStation 5. This information was found on the official website for the game. This is, if it isn’t clear, something that Microsoft worked out with Sony, as a precondition to getting this game published on their platform. Both parties agreed to this, along with other conditions to this title. We may yet learn about other such conditions in the future as well.
But we should consider the ramifications of this news right now. It seems to suggest that Microsoft is making cross-play and cross-progression work between PlayStation 5 and the other platforms that Sea of Thieves is already on. Rather than make some system work between them and Sony, they just got Sony to agree to let them bring their account system over to the console.
Fans will naturally be suspicious, but they should think about it before they rebel on the idea. You cannot have cross-save or cross-progression if there is no amount of data or information collection involved. If Microsoft did not make this happen, PlayStation 5 players would only have their save data tied to their PlayStation 5 consoles. They could probably carry that data over to another PS5 unit if the one they owned broke down. But what they would be missing out on is carrying their game over if and when Sea of Thieves jumps once again to a new console generation.
This does also raise the question if Microsoft’s other three games are getting this system setup on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch as well, and possibly, on Nintendo’s next console too. It cannot be denied that Microsoft would also benefit from compelling people to make Microsoft accounts if they don’t already own one. If you made gamers choose, do you think they would prefer not to deal with the inconvenience, or would they rather have that cross-progression cross-save feature for these games? It seems this is one of the reasons Microsoft decided to port these games in the first place.
